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<\/A>Re: Apul’s post<\/A>, David Mamet’s<\/A> racist salesman drama Glengarry Glen Ross <\/EM>is being revived on Broadway<\/A> next Wednesday. <\/EM>Even though the lines are uttered in character, it’s a deeply offensive play<\/A>: \nMOSS: <\/STRONG>I’ll tell you what else: don’t ever try to sell an Indian.
AARONOW: <\/STRONG>I’d never try to sell an Indian.
MOSS: <\/STRONG>You get those names come up, you ever get ’em, “Patel?”… You had one you’d know it. Patel. They keep coming up. I don’t know. They like to talk to salesmen. They’re lonely, something. They like to feel superior, I don’t know. Never bought a fucking thing… They got a grapevine. Fuckin’ Indians, George. Not my cup of tea. Speaking of which I want to tell you something: I never got a cup of tea with them. You see them in the restaurants. A supercilious race. What is this look on their face all the time? I don’t know. I don’t know. Their broads all look like they just got fucked with a dead cat,<\/STRONG> I don’t know…
ROMA: <\/STRONG>Patel? Ravidam Patel? How am I going to make a living on these deadbeat wogs? <\/STRONG>Where did you get this, from the morgue?… Patel? Fuck you. Fuckin’ Shiva handed him a million dollars, told him “sign the deal,” he wouldn’t sign. And Vishnu, too.<\/BLOCKQUOTE>\nThe play, written in 1984, won a Pulitzer and was turned into a major 1992 film<\/A> with Alec Baldwin, Al Pacino, Kevin Spacey and Ed Harris. <\/EM>Mamet had second thoughts<\/A>, but only decades later:<\/P>\n
He thinks maybe he should take another look at his anti-Indian remarks that still smolder in Glengarry Glen Ross,<\/EM> a play he wrote 20 years ago. “Patel” was a racial epithet uttered by guys in his line of work years ago, when he was selling real estate. Maybe it doesn’t belong in the play anymore, given what the times are now.<\/BLOCKQUOTE>\n<\/p>\n\nYa think? Some context by a Brit who shilled storm windows<\/A> over the phone: <\/P>\n
If you sent a salesman to the home of an Indian family… not only did you lose your commission for that lead, but you were docked a percent of your next one. The company president swore this wasn’t racism but a cold business calculation. Indians, he told us, never buy, they just haggle ad nauseum. This stereotype, obviously an international one, surfaces in Glengarry Glen Ross,<\/EM> which David Mamet confected out of his year-long stint in a Chicago sales office. In the play, Shelly Levene knows he’s despised by his supervisor when the only lead he gets is named “Patel,” a name as Indian as Shapiro is Jewish. “Patel?” says a sympathetic colleague. “They gave you Patel?”<\/BLOCKQUOTE>\nThe Broadway revival has Alan Alda<\/A> and Liev Schreiber<\/A> and is being directed by Joe Mantello<\/A>, the director of the smash hit Wicked.<\/EM> Between the Pulitzer Prize and Wicked,<\/EM> this puerile work is 100% blessed by the mainstream. From Bombay Dreams<\/EM> to ‘fucked with a dead cat’: we’ve come a long way, baby.<\/P>\n
Update: Put Down the Bong, People (Don’t Put Down the Patels remix)<\/FONT><\/STRONG><\/P>\n
<\/A>Ok, I’m going to say this slowly and clearly: y’all are on crack. <\/EM>Respected authors, playwrights and random hecklers included.<\/P>\n
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- It’s prima facia offensive.<\/STRONG> Take the line about desi wives looking like the victims of necrophiliac bestial rape. I shouldn’t have to explain to anyone who’s not named Michael Dukakis why that’s insulting.
Or take the line about deadbeat wogs. Non-Brit readers may not recognize this for the intense ethnic slur it is. This play is set in America, not the UK; it’s almost like Mamet purposely used ‘wog’ instead of ‘Paki,’ ‘dot-buster’ or ‘sand n–‘ to shield himself from criticism.
When I saw the film, I was groovin’ on the dialogue density a la Shakespeare, Stoppard, Woody Allen, until it suddenly went racist. It was as if someone had reached out and slapped me.
\n- It crosses the verisimilitude line.<\/STRONG> This isn’t about a few lines or even a few tirades for texture and to establish that a character is both verite and racist. Mamet is using the cover of fiction for grossly excessive, gleeful bashing on a visible minority. Even granting that he’s aiming for an over-the-top, Tarantino sensibility, the dead cat comment is so far over the line, it’s in another galaxy.
There is a practical limit to the ‘in character’ defense. If I performed a play at your house and said, ‘Women are evil,’ your wife would laugh it off as fleshing out motivation. If I said, ‘Indian women named Sandhya look like they’ve been anally violated with a cattle prod,’ Sandhya might justifiably inflict testicular violence.
\n- It’s spoken by protagonists.<\/STRONG> As much as I adore knee-jerk replies by those who’ve never seen the work (or read the script<\/A>), I must demur. The Dave Moss (Ed Harris in the film) and Ricky Roma (Al Pacino) characters are central characters in this ensemble piece. They’re not discardable villains, they’re respected and looked up to by the other characters. Even if Mamet’s misanthropy makes Neil LaBute sound like the Sundays, these guys lay claim on some share of the author’s voice.
\n- It targets a specific minority.<\/STRONG> It’s just as graphic as the testicle-tearing and cadaver-nibbling in Sin City,<\/EM> but it’s targeted at a very specific, real-life ethnic group, not characters in a comic book.
\n- He picked a minority that wouldn’t object.<\/STRONG> When Mamet wrote this play, there were ~350,000 desis<\/A> in the U.S. Today there are ~2,000,000. While the U.S. population increased by 28%, the desi population increased by 470%. At the time, Mamet’s character was attacking curios under musty glass. They were just a new immigrant group who were careful spenders of necessity; 1980 is the first time Asian Indians were even counted separately on the Census. Mamet might as well have picked on Xosas or Bantus in America.
Today, in contrast, both South Asian Studies departments<\/A> and David Mamet find desi Americans at the gates. Now that desis are in the audience, the lines Mamet penned don’t stand the test of saying them to your face. They’re just too disrespectful. That’s<\/EM> why he’s having second thoughts<\/A>.
Here’s a thought experiment: replace ‘wog’ with ‘n–,’ ‘kike,’ ‘gook’ or ‘wetback’ and see whether the play would be commercially viable.
\n- He has a history of penning racist tirades.<\/STRONG> Mamet’s plays are chock full of anti-minority tirades ‘in character,’ he’s obsessed with these. I credit him for fighting Holocaust revisionism in real life, but look to his Russian Jewish ancestry for bearing. His respectability and his respect for minorities are quite orthogonal.
\n- It’s about commercial freedom.<\/STRONG> I love that Mamet is guaranteed freedom of expression in America. Similarly, we <\/EM>have the right to purchase works that don’t pointedly disrespect us, and to persuade mainstream markets of the same. <\/LI><\/OL>\n
On an unrelated and purely <\/EM>humorous note, it appears Mamet would not take a shine to Bollywood. In a recent essay<\/A>, he listed film turn-offs, and as he ticked them off I thought ‘yep, yep, yep’ — they’re in everything from Amar Akbar Anthony<\/EM> to Veer-Zaara <\/EM>\ud83d\ude09<\/P>\n
Any film containing any of the disqualificatory elements listed below loses… any further claim on me: Any use of Handel’s Messiah<\/EM>, or The Four Seasons<\/EM>, or Pachelbel’s Canon<\/EM>; any slow-motion sequence of lovers out of doors; any rack-focus from grass, wheat, or other vegetables to a distant object; … any shot of the protagonist twirling slowly with arms spread; a title card reading, “based on a true story”; and that, to me, unfailing diagnostic tool, a present participle in the title.<\/BLOCKQUOTE><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Re: Apul’s post, David Mamet’s racist salesman drama Glengarry Glen Ross is being revived on Broadway next Wednesday. Even though the lines are uttered in character, it’s a deeply offensive play: MOSS: I’ll tell you what else: don’t ever try to … Continue reading